Batman – Arcade

Happy Monday to you all. With all the Batman Vs Superman hype currently I decided to reflect back on the Tim Burton inspired game of the movie.

Batman on the Arcade

What….what are you?…..I’m Batman! the classic words uttered by Michael Keaton in Tim Burton’s Batman. This game tries to capture the gold from the movie, with lots of nice speech samples direct from the movie and lots of movie stills thrown in for good measure.

The game follows the film plot pretty closely with the first level starting in the streets leading to the Batmobile. Enemy sprites will randomly patrol the streets for you to punch and kick into oblivion. Mobs take the forms of different models depending on difficulty, from trench coat and mobster hats, to street thugs and window shooters. Batman can jump, punch and kick his way through the levels until he finds some of his wonderful toys. When we reach the end of level 1 we see the Batmobile encased in it’s shields, with the speech sample “Shields Open” the shields roll back and Batman zooms off to the next level. We get a bit of a break from walking now as we are sat inside the Batmobile as it speeds towards Axis Chemicals, you take the control of the Gatling guns on the front of the car, and your job is to blast the black cars while not hitting civilian cars until you get to Axis Chemical plant. Axis Chemical plant offers Batman his first look at the weapons on offer, from the Batarang, the spear gun and gas grenades. Your job is to locate and defeat Jack Napier who quips “Nice Outfit” upon engagement. All in all the game is quite solid, it does have it’s annoyances though, such as health bar runs out really quickly and some of the mobs are a pigs arse to avoid getting hit by. Batman himself looks pretty good, holding his cape up in a hooded claw manner ( watch Penelope Pittstop to get an idea of what I mean ). Levels are quite well thought out, with platforms positioned to gain access to weapons, health restore icons ( in the shape of the Bat Signal ) and more. You can use the spear gun to either hit oncoming bad guys or you can shoot upwards and a rope attaches to it and you can gain access to platforms that are too high to jump up to. The game does a decent job of trying to capture the movie, it’s locations and music are all recognisable as are the main sprites, but something just doesn’t click over all with the experience. If you are a fan of the movie then it’s worth having a look at this game, there just something….missing.

Graphics:- Over all, not a bad job at all, nice big sprites with good detail throughout the game, animation is not too bad, could have been better, but I get the feeling this was a quick cash in when the movie was released. The cut scene stills are well coloured and captured well too…Not bad by all means.

Sound:- Music from the movie, recognisable from the start, lovely speech bytes from the film too which add to it. The in-game sounds are a little lack lustre but they do the job they were intended for.

Overall:- So does Batman live up to it’s movie counterpart? Not really I am sad to say, and as this Batman movie was my favorite of all the Batman franchise, I was expecting a little more than this delivered. If you are a fan of the movies then by all means have a go, it’s not an awful game, I have seen much worse on the movie tie in scene, MUCH worse. Give it a go, it might be your cup of tea…it was just missing a couple of sugars to be mine.